Monday, August 18, 2014

Ukraine army pushes into rebel stronghold of Luhansk

Government says state flag raised over police station in separatist-held city, as foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany meet in Berlin to discuss crisis

By Tom Parfitt, Moscow, Daily Telegraph
7:04PM BST 17 Aug 2014

The Ukrainian army pushed into a key city controlled by Russia-backed separatists on Sunday, the government said, as the two countries' foreign ministers met in Berlin for crisis talks.

Kiev also admitted the rebels had shot down one if its fighter aircraft, while accusing the separatists of bringing three missile launchers onto Ukrainian territory from Russia.

Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said government forces had advanced into the Zhovtneviy neighbourhood in the northeast of the besieged city of Luhansk and taken control of the neighbourhood police station.

"They raised the state flag over it," he told a news briefing.

Luhansk, with a peacetime population of 420,000, is the second largest stronghold being defended by the rebels in eastern Ukraine, whose main bastion is the city of Donetsk, 90 miles to the west.

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Tom Maertens served as National Security Council director for nonproliferation and homeland defense under Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush, and as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department during and after 9/11. Before retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2002, he had served in Ethiopia, Colombia, the USSR, Panama, Austria, and Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Leigh Pomeroy has written on subjects ranging from politics to health care to film to wine. He has assisted on two books, Dr. D's Handbook for Men Over 40 by Dr. Peter Dorsen and Not What the Doctor Ordered by Jeffrey C. Bauer. In 2004, he was the DFL (Democratic Party) Candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District. He formerly taught writing and film at Minnesota State University, Mankato.